Days 21-22: Crossing Over
Did a couple crossings: first across the Cook Straight from the south to north islands by ferry in 2.5m swells (considered a good day), and second across the 17km Tongariro Crossing by foot.
The ferries were remarkably nice and had $3 lattes that weren’t half bad. They also served “American Hotdogs” with an interesting wrapper.
What’s more American than a Confederate Dog?
We breezed through Wellington on our way up to National Park (yeah, that’s the name of a town), but were there long enough to tell it was a neat town. Will have to go back sometime.
The Tongariro Crossing is considered “the finest one day walk in New Zealand.” But they must have been talking about doing it on a fine day. The weather forecast was “partly cloudy” or “mostly fine” depending on who you asked. So we drove ourselves to one end of the track (it’s a 17km one-way hike) and figured we do half of it and return to the car.
We got there at the same time as hundreds of our closest friends (the trail was by far the busiest trail we’ve ever been on; they must have heard the same weather report). Just like weather reports in general, this one was wrong. It was fairly nasty hiking weather with pouring rain, heavy fog, and extremely strong winds. Kelly literally had to hold on to a boulder to avoid being blown into a crater during strong gusts. After the steep ascent, we decided it was safer to continue to the other end of the trail (and catch a shuttle back to the car). The sceneray that we could see was very pretty, but it was limited. We want to go back and do it again on a fine day.
We got to the other end only to find out there was no shuttle service to the other car park. There were enough of us stranded at the end that a kind Kiwi (waiting to pick up other hikers) shuttled a bunch of us drivers back to the start to pick up our cars. The Kiwi’s are just really nice people! Since we were in Karma debt, we gave a couple of Aussies a ride back to their hotel (and got an offer to show us around Sydney when we get there in a month).
Kel enjoying the scenery. Those are people taking shelter behind some rocks to her left.
Us near the summit with one of the Emerald lakes behind us (take our word for it).
It’s really hard to hold a camera still for half a second, but here’s an attempt at the base of the crossing.
Tags: New Zealand
Kelly & Marcus
April 4th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
Looks like a “fine” day for a walk to me! Hang on to Kelly, we don’t want her blowing off into space!
Stay warm 🙂
April 11th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
You would think that on a 2 year trip you could stay in where it is dry on a day like this!!